Parlour in the soup over mock funeral for Kathy Chow

Compiled by FAZLEENA AZIZ, C.ARUNO AND R. ARAVINTHAN

A FUNERAL parlour in China landed in hot soup after it set up a mock wake, complete with a coffin and flower wreaths, purportedly in memory of the recently-deceased Kathy Chow, Sin Chew Daily reported.

The operator shared a picture of a framed photo of Chow in front of a coffin, leading many to believe that it was a wake held on behalf of the late actress.

However, Internet users noticed that the operator had used similar photos of wakes in the past and questioned why there were no funeral wreaths from friends and family.

The operator later explained that she was a fan of Chow and that she was mourning in her own way.

However, many Internet users suspected that the operator was pulling a stunt online in a bid to gain views and improve her business.

“How can you take advantage of Kathy even after she has passed away? Have you obtained permission from her family members? If not, you have broken the law!” one netizen wrote.

Chow, 57, died on Dec 11 after succumbing to an illness, according to her studio.

Before she died, the last update on her Douyin account was on Dec 8. She posted a series of photos from her past roles and asked: “Which drama do you know me from?”

She rose to fame for her role as Zhou Zhiruo in the 1994 TVB drama The Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre, an adaptation of a martial arts novel penned by novelist Louis Cha, who died in 2018.

The above articles are compiled from the vernacular newspapers (Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil dailies). As such, stories are grouped according to the respective language/medium. Where a paragraph begins with a >, it denotes a separate news item.